Trivia / The 8-Bit Guy

• Milestone Celebration:
  • David's 200th video is a behind-the-scenes look on his life as a full-time retro tech YouTuber.
  • His 1 million subscribers special has him talking about how he has fared in his three years as a full-time retro tech YouTuber, as well as revealing a bit role for Young Sheldon (that is, contributing a Tandy modem Sheldon uses in one episode).
• The Merch:
  • Some of the Fun T Shirts David wears are of his own design (e.g., "I Love My (Commodore) PET", "I Like My Chips With D.I.P.", etc.) and were available for sale on his website.
  • This video demonstrates how much work David has to put in to actually distribute physical copies of his games, specifically Planet X3, from acquiring vintage floppy disks, to employing his wife, daughter, and other friends to physically assemble the boxes as well as duplicating and labeling disks.
  • As of May 2023, David plans to phase out physical merchandise due to the time spent fulfilling orders as well as the low return on investment, and he wants to focus on producing more videos. In particular, he states that he actually loses money on shipping physical games overseas. However, the digital versions of his games will remain available for purchase.
• No Budget: In the video where David shows off construction of his new studio, he mentions that his original studio was built on a shoestring budget back when YouTube was a hobby and not his full time job, using packing foam instead of proper sound-dampening panels and jerry-rigging his overhead camera rig.
• Port Overdosed: Attack of the PETSCII Robots was originally created for the Commodore PET, intending to push the limits of what kind of game can be made on the platform, and subsequently ported to the VIC-20 and C64. Other platforms the game has been ported to (or planned for) include but are not limited to the Atari 8-Bit Computers, Atari 7800, Apple ][, Amiga, Nintendo Entertainment System, Super NES, Sega Genesis, PlayStation Portable, ZX Spectrum, MS-DOS and the Commander X16. Most of the other ports are being/were handled by other people. Because of burnout partly due to this trope and expressing interest in moving on to other projects, David stated on the Attack of the PETSCII Robots Facebook group that the NES, Super NES, Atari 7800, and MS-DOS versions would be the final ports that he would have any official involvement in. David also states that he would be happy to give prospective programmers access to the game's source code and assets, but it was up to them for coding, testing, manufacturing, and distribution of their ports.
• Reality Subtext: In the Operator from India gag in "Old Computers Did It Better," just before the associate hangs up, he suggests the user to "run Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter" to try and fix the issue. This not only is impossible since the computer won't even turn on, it has nothing to do with the problem in the first place. This is most likely a gag based on his time at AST Computers in technical support where one of his coworkers would frequently suggest users do this exact same thing no matter how unrelated to the problem it was in order to artificially inflate his amount of helped customers, as detailed in a panel he did at a convention.
• Real-Life Relative: David mentions in this video that he’s a second cousin of the late Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul of Pantera.
• Schedule Slip:
  • David's main channel gets updated more or less at least twice a month. However, his other channel, 8-Bit Keys, saw more sporadic updates and now is largely inactive.
  • In the Planet X3 documentary, David mentions that his throughput for releasing videos had slowed significantly once the game was completed. Manufacturing and shipping out the initial Kickstarter preorders took nearly three months.
  • During the winter storm that crippled North Texas in mid-February 2021, a water pipe burst at David's house, practically flooding the whole house, forcing him and his family to put their non-ruined belongings in the new studio building and temporarily moving next door with his mother. In a video update, he stated the channel was basically on hiatus while the disaster was remediated.
  • The video on the Amiga was originally promised to come out relatively soon after his video on Commodore's disk drives, which was released in January 2020. However, a series of events — including the COVID-19 Pandemic, and David finding it surprisingly hard to get his hands on a working, unmodded Amiga 1000, while also having to deal with various real-life issues — saw it repeatedly pushed back. The video finally landed in February 2022, and was followed by two more Amiga-related videos in subsequent months.
• Technology Marches On: Discussed in "What Happened to America's Electronics Stores". The demise of electronic stores such as Radio Shack, Circuit City, and Fry's Electronics can be attributed in part to the existence of modern smartphones.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the 2020 video where he shows off his home network, David mentions that his original studio was designed for a totally different channel, in which David would portray a Mad Scientist character debunking instances of Hollywood Science in movies and TV shows. However, the project proved to be too ambitious, and David abandoned the idea early on.
  • In the video where he shows off the construction of a new studio/storage shed, David mentions that he and his brother Mike had attempted to find commercial space halfway between them to house their respective YouTube channels. However, any commercial real estate that was halfway between Keller and Kennedale was prohibitively expensive, namely because such properties were in Fort Worth or Arlington proper, and most of the properties the brothers could reasonably afford were either to the north of Keller or south of Kennedale.
  • The "Amazing Tech From Texas" mini-series was originally planned to be as many as 8 episodes. However, it was pared down to four, as the videos had very low popularity compared to David's other videos, and he couldn't justify the trouble he had to go through (e.g., losing his drone to trees in Round Rock, having to replace the windshield on his Tesla Model 3, etc.) to produce the remainder of the planned episodes when the payoff was going to be underwhelming.
  • For Planet X2, David had wanted to implement other unit types such as planes and boats as well as other building types, but his self imposed design limitations prevented this; many of the cut features would later be realized in Planet X3. Speaking of Planet X3, David had wanted to implement cutscenes to tie the maps into a cohesive story; however, because he wanted the game to be playable on even the earliest of MS-DOS compatibles and fit on a single 5¼" floppy disk, the cutscenes weren't implemented, and the intro cutscene was revamped into a teaser trailer.
  • The NES version of Attack of the PETSCII Robots was originally meant to be manufactured and distributed by David himself (even having already invested in the design of the cartridges and the like) but the port itself didn't get finished before David lost the motivation to do so for reasons told in the Port Overdosed entry, so instead the source code was put up online for others to potentially complete and sell.
  • In the first few videos on the 8-Bit Keys channel^note as well as in the "Sound Blaster keyboards" video on the main channel, David says that the then-new sister channel dedicated to old amateur keyboards would feature live performances by David and his friends (using the keyboards), even asking for viewers to send them suggestions for songs to play. This didn't come to pass, which makes the heavy focus on announcing such content feel rather odd, as the issue was never brought up in later videos.